by Steph Post
“Or perhaps not.”
Tom stumbled out of the wagon to the sound of Daniel’s crackling laughter behind him. He stood out on the midway with his head in his hands, trying to comprehend what he had just done.
Ruby could hear the screams in her sleep. She jolted awake, fighting with the sheets twisted around her hips. The early morning light was barely penetrating through the two small wagon windows, but in the gloom she could see Hayden turning around in the narrow space, searching the floor for his clothes. Ruby scrubbed at her face with her hands, trying to wake up. The screaming had stopped, but now she could hear movement and muffled shouting as people ran past the wagon on their way to the center of the midway. In the dim light, Ruby found Hayden’s eyes and whispered.
“What the hell?”
Hayden leaned over the dresser and peered through one of the windows as he yanked up his suspenders.
“There’s a mess of folks on the midway. At the Wheel.”
Ruby kicked away the sheets and slid off the bed. She clawed her hair away from her face and reached for a robe hanging on the back of a chair. She slipped her arms into it and wrapped it tightly around her waist. Hayden was already on the wagon steps and he called over his shoulder to her.
“One of the rousties just ran by. Said something about someone being killed on the midway.”
Ruby didn’t bother with her boots.
“Oh my God.”
Hayden turned to her, his mouth set in a grim line, his hair wild and sticking up. He reached out his hand to her.
“Come on.”
From the steps, Ruby could see the crowd gathered beneath the Ferris Wheel. She followed Hayden down and headed toward the very heart of the midway, where the great wheel rose like the crown jewel of the carnival, outshining even the big top. The crowd had formed a tight ring around something on the ground and Hayden and Ruby began to push their way in. As faces met hers, the circle slowly opened up, letting Ruby through. In the very center, she found him. A broken man, legs going in unnatural directions, brown blood crusted across part of his face, the neck of a smashed bottle still in the clutches of his curled fingers. Hayden came up beside Ruby, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the body.
“Jesus Christ. It’s Tom.”
The rest of the crowd was as shocked as Ruby. It didn’t seem as if anyone had yet disturbed the scene. Two rousties stood closer, shaking their heads as they looked at the body from different angles, and Zena and Sonja were sobbing quietly in each other’s arms, but most everyone was standing like Ruby, with helpless hands and stunned expressions. Ruby scanned the crowd for Samuel or Pontilliar, but she didn’t see them. Someone was fighting their way through the wall of people behind her, though, and Ruby spun around just in time to catch January in her arms. She was hysterical.
“Is it Tom? Tom? Let me see him! Get off me! Let me see him!”
Ruby tried to hold January, but she was clawing at her eyes, clawing at anything and everything she could, and Ruby had to let her go. January stumbled past her and collapsed on Tom’s body, screaming and trying to turn his smashed head so she could see his face. Ruby moved toward her, but Hayden put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
“Let them.”
Hayden moved aside, letting Wanda and Darlene rush past him and fall on January. The two dancers were able to drag her a few feet away from Tom’s body and hold her. January was sobbing into Darlene’s shoulder and the women held her in a protective embrace, letting her keen and rock against them. Ruby turned to Hayden, confused and hurt that he would try to keep her from going to January. She tried to pull away, but Hayden squeezed her shoulder and nodded toward another disturbance in the crowd.
“Let the girls be with January right now. You need to deal with him.”
Ruby warily looked across the circle of shocked faces and whispers, but she heard Pontilliar before she saw him.
“What the hell is going on here? Why is everyone standing around the chump heister like a bunch of lollygaggers? Jesus Christ, if I find another one of you lepers passed out on the midway again…”
Pontilliar broke through the crowd, but pulled himself up short when he saw the huddle of women and Tom’s body beside them. Darlene looked over January’s bent head and gave Pontilliar a vicious, protective look and he took an uneasy step back. A few of the rousties in the crowd shook their heads and scowled. Ruby left Hayden and crossed over to Pontilliar. She grabbed him sharply by the elbow and turned him around, steering him back through the crowd. She hissed in his ear as she pushed him through.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Pontilliar sputtered as they broke out into the open.
“I didn’t know. Jesus, I didn’t know.”
Ruby saw Samuel standing alone beside the Whip and she shoved Pontilliar in that direction. Samuel slowly shook his head as they approached.
“Another dark, dark day for us.”
Pontilliar smoothed his palms down the front of his striped vest. Unlike most everyone else in the crowd, he’d taken the time to get fully dressed before responding to the screams and commotion. Even Samuel looked slightly disheveled with his shirt untucked and his cuffs open. Ruby cinched her robe tighter and turned from Pontilliar to Samuel. She raised her eyebrows.
“What happened, Samuel? Did he fall?”
Samuel dipped his chin a moment.
“Zena and Sonja found him like that. Just like that. I was here shortly after I heard the first scream.”
“So he fell.”
“I believe he fell.”
Pontilliar craned his neck to look back toward the Ferris Wheel. The large crowd was beginning to break up and small loose groups of onlookers had formed, some crying, some whispering, a few just lighting cigarettes and kicking at the dirt, already grumbling about the heat. Pontilliar turned back to Samuel.
“He fell? From the Wheel? What the hell was he doing on the Wheel?”
Ruby’s eyes rose to the top of the fifty-foot Ferris Wheel. Then she looked back to Tom’s body. Someone had covered it with a quilt and Darlene and Wanda were again trying to pull January away from it. Ruby set her gaze directly upwards from the body. Tom would have had to fall from one of the top outside cars. High, but not too impossibly high to survive a fall. She turned to Samuel and saw that he had followed her eyes.
“Yes, he must have fallen from a car only forty feet up.”
Pontilliar pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his upper lip.
“And that killed him? Wouldn’t it just, break his legs or something?”
Samuel closed his eyes and spoke slowly.
“I’ve seen many men die under strange circumstances. Unexplainable. Without a scratch on them. It is not unheard of for men to die in unnatural ways.”
Pontilliar huffed impatiently.
“Yes, but this man?”
Samuel opened his eyes.
“This man, I believe, fell.”
“And it killed him.”
“It killed him. He might have fallen backwards out of the car, hit one of the spokes or the drive rim on the way down and mangled his legs. I don’t know. I suppose Tom could have been beaten and killed somewhere else and then dragged beneath the Wheel, but I saw no evidence of the body having been moved. I can’t be sure until I look closer, but I believe, from the angle, that his neck was snapped. He most likely hit the ground head first.”
“Holy Mother Mary.”
Pontilliar stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket.
“But what was he doing up there in the goddamn first place?”
Ruby shook her head. She suddenly felt dizzy and was reminded of the events of the night before. The rum, the moonshine. Hayden. Ruby pushed back the swell of nausea and tried to focus.
“There was glass smashed around him. Part of a bottle still in his hand.”
Pontilliar scowled at her.
“So he was drunk? Did you see him drinking last night?”
Ruby rolled her eyes.
“The show was dark last night. Of course he was drunk. Everyone was drunk.”
Pontilliar frowned and turned back to Samuel.
“So, what, he’s drunk? Climbs the Wheel and loses his balance?”
“Maybe.”
Pontilliar’s eyes popped and he turned from Samuel to Ruby. Ruby shrugged and looked away. Hayden was still standing where she’d left him. He wasn’t looking toward the covered body, though. He was staring intently across the midway at something she couldn’t see. She leaned to the side, trying to follow Hayden’s line of sight, but Pontilliar’s screech snapped her back to attention.
“Maybe? For God’s sake, what does ‘maybe’ mean?”
Samuel sighed.
“It means that maybe he climbed up the Wheel, lost his balance and accidentally fell. Or maybe he climbed up with the intention of falling.”
Pontilliar stepped back a moment and then stabbed his finger into Samuel’s chest.
“No.”
Samuel glared at him, but Pontilliar continued.
“No, we are not doing that again. Absolutely not. First the geek decides to go off and count worms and now this? Not in my carnival. No way.”
Ruby stepped closer, trying to get Pontilliar to lower his voice. A few of the bystanders were beginning to look over at them with concern. Samuel’s voice remained perfectly level.
“It’s just an idea.”
Ruby turned to Samuel.
“But a plausible one? You think Tom could’ve killed himself? Fallen on purpose?”
Samuel shook his head and raised his hands in defense.
“I have no idea. He could have been pushed for all we know. I’m just remarking that it is a peculiar death. We shouldn’t rule out any possibilities until we know for certain. That is all.”
Pontilliar closed in on Samuel, his voice grinding into a whisper.
“Pushed? Now you’re talking murder? You’re saying someone murdered that roustie on my goddamn Ferris Wheel?”
Ruby tried to get between them.
“No one is saying anything about anything. Stop jumping to conclusions. Both of you.”
Pontilliar stepped back and pulled his vest down tighter over his bulging stomach. He looked around and glared at the rousties standing idly nearby. They quickly ducked their heads and returned to their cigarettes. Pontilliar pointed at Samuel again.
“You. Clean this up. Figure this out. I want to know what happened. And I don’t want anyone talking. You hear me? We open the show at two today and I do not want word of this hitting town. You make sure all these half-wit gazoonies keep their flaps shut, you understand?”
Samuel’s eyes were dark and his face stiff.
“I understand.”
Pontilliar turned on Ruby.
“And you.”
She glared back at him.
“Don’t even start.”
Pontilliar looked back and forth between Samuel and Ruby and then pushed between them, huffing and stomping toward the office wagon. Ruby turned, looking around for Hayden. He was still in the same spot, his head bent strangely as he looked across the midway. Ruby started toward him, but froze when she finally saw what he was looking at. He was staring at the geek, standing alone in front of the big top tent with his eyes riveted on the covered mound of Tom’s body. Even at the distance, Ruby could see that Daniel’s eyes were narrowed and his mouth twisted. His shoulders rose in a sigh and then he turned his back and slowly walked away.
Some of my brethren feared the King Gods. Odin and Dyaus and Zeus. Odomankoma and Ta’aroa. Re-Horakhty and Chernobog. Even now, those closest to me, my allies, if you will, still cast their eyes down if Bondye or The Great Spirit come strolling into town. It’s pathetic. I did not fear Esus so long ago and I do not fear El now. No, the only thing I will run from, the only thing I truly abhor, is boredom.
When I left the ruined forest of Verdun it wasn’t due to the stench of the piled bodies or the sucking sickness of the mud or the matchstick trees exploding like confetti against the snow. I was disgusted, yes, but not from the blood and pus and rain. Not from a death toll or a loss of humanity, whatever that may be. No, I was repulsed by the complete and total lassitude of the spectacle. Here we are, in the modern age. Men are no longer covered in blue paint, waving pointy sticks at one another. There are no swords and shields, no catapults, no buckets of burning tar. This war, The Great War, had tanks! Fortresses on wheels and guns the size of cattle and chlorine gas floating across the land like morning mist, ready to drown men without a drop of water to be seen. Such promise of a smash-up! Yet what did these men do? They dug lines in the mud and sat, pouting like children, cradling their automatic rifles in their arms like dolls. I once witnessed the siege of a Norman castle and thought it could never get any duller than that. Men sitting around, eating rats and peering through the turrets, just waiting for their walls to crumble around them. And they did eventually, of course, but, oh, at what cost to my sanity?
This new war was far worse, though. Boring, boring, boring. Give me men with only sticks and tar, as long as they are using them. As long as they are running and shouting and causing some commotion. For there is nothing so terrible as inertia. As complacency. As the static coming and going of lives, parading past on an endless loop, over and over, the same, the same. Technology accelerates and atrophies, morals loosen and tighten with the fashions, but the trials of men never change. It’s always the same. The same chessboard pieces of lust, pride and possessiveness, moving around each other like magnets caught in a spiral, never drifting too far off course. Even when half of the world has just exploded in the name of some sort of politics, the pieces will never spin off the board.
I apologize. I digress. I admit, I have only myself to blame for this petulant mood. I’ve been doing this for long enough, you’d think I would know better. When I stood upon the tawdry midway and felt the promise of something new steal into my heart, I had hope. I was galvanized by the possibilities. I let myself salivate in anticipation. But I was tempted, only to be jilted. I have combed the corners and felt along the cracks to no avail. There is nothing here but more remnants of the same. I tried to assuage my disappointment with a distraction, a momentary, if mundane, high. Girl loves boy. Boy gambles girl. Girl loses boy. Pandemonium beneath the Wheel. Chaos! Disruption and disorder, my bread and butter. And yet. The rush behind my lungs lasted less than a second, the spark of intrigue fizzled before it could even flare. This endless monotony stretches on for all time and I can do nothing but sit here and grumble.
Hayden was just finishing the caricature of a woman who almost didn’t need one when he caught sight of Samuel weaving through the bustling midway crowd toward him. Though Samuel was at the heart of every affair, every concern, of the Star Light’s, he rarely strode down the center of the carnival during the day, in full view of the rubes. Samuel wasn’t a freak or performer, wary of giving the show away for free, it had been years since he’d stooped to the role of Mutumbo, the Wild Man of Borneo, but he was still liable to cause a stir. A dark African man, well dressed, with tribal scarring on his face, always raised eyebrows, if not insults or worse, from the townsfolk. Oftentimes, the marks thought he was part of a minstrel show and tried to heckle him back into a tent. On more than one occasion, Hayden had witnessed a man take a swing at Samuel, simply for being present on the midway. This never turned out well, though, as two or three rousties were always immediately on the scene, calling a Hey Rube. The rousties certainly harbored their own prejudices and didn’t enjoy taking orders from Samuel, but they never forgot who was responsible for them having a job in the first place.
Samuel skirted around a cluster of barefoot children, whispering and pointing, and came up beside the woman sitting for her portrait. Her eyes bulged even farther out of her head when she glimpsed who was sharing space with her and her cheeks began to puff up in complaint. Hayden grimaced and finished adding a third chin to the lady’s profile. He signed the paper quickly and s
wept it off his easel. Normally he had a little spiel when he presented the finished product, in the hopes that the sitter would bring back a few friends, but Hayden didn’t even bother this time. He handed her the drawing and wiped the charcoal from his fingers with a rag before turning to Samuel and sighing.
“What do you want?”
Samuel waited for the woman to squeeze her bulk past them and then he took a step closer, bowing his head slightly. His dark brown eyes and ramrod posture had always been unreadable to Hayden and he didn’t know if the news he was about to receive was good or bad. Samuel’s voice was low and sharp in his ear.
“My wagon. Now.”
Hayden stepped back and looked around for a customer who might be headed his way. He gestured toward his easel and chair.
“And what about this? I’ve got a livelihood to make here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Your silly pictures can wait.”
Samuel continued on down the midway. Hayden turned to watch him disappear between Alicia and Linus’s reptile wagon and the Ten-In-One tent. He tried to remind himself that Samuel was one of Ruby’s oldest friends, but he’d never gotten along with the man. Hayden knew he didn’t have much of a choice, though, and signaled to Casper at the Toss-A-Ring game to keep an eye on his spot. He tugged on the bottom of his vest and reluctantly followed in Samuel’s wake.
Samuel’s wagon wasn’t marked with a sign, as Pontilliar’s was, but everyone working the show knew that it was where all of the real management decisions issued from. It was where the money went in and out, the circuit route was adjusted in the event off storm blowdowns and delays and the bribes for Chandler to take to the town bag men calculated. Samuel came to Pontilliar’s office wagon on petty errands; Pontilliar came to Samuel’s management wagon to do business. Hayden approached it, noticing that, unlike the other wagons, the side of Samuel’s had been repainted. The scrolling banner for the Modern Motorized Menagerie had been whitewashed and the mural now proclaimed the arrival of RANDOLPH PONTILLIAR’S SPECTACULAR STAR LIGHT MIRACULUM! Hayden frowned at the shoddy paint job as he climbed up the rickety steps and pushed through the door without knocking.